Augustown: A Novel

Gina, also referred to as Miss G, serves as the narrator of Augustown, though that reveal comes in the last chapter of the novel. She plays a crucial role as both character and narrator. As narrator, she offers various philosophical and historical perspectives about Jamaica, Bedwardism, Rastafari, and the oppressive system of Babylon. As a character, she is the woman who tries to rise above Babylon, though the price of that temporary victory is her life. Her resistance to Babylon has been long brewing: Ma Taffy has primed her to believe she can succeed, saying, “You can be anything you want to be, girl…so long as you put your mind to it. You can accomplish it” (190). Gina’s knowledge of the inequity of Babylon is clear, evident from her conversation with Matthew in Beverly Hills, as is her memory of the loss of Clarky, brewing in a “shivering rage” (221). Ma Taffy knows that Gina will start the autoclaps from the moment she feels Kaia’s newly bald head. She thinks, “[Gina] will find her son without the dreadlocks she has made him grow since birth, and something is bound to explode” (38). Gina’s rage over what has been taken from her child pushes the crowd gathered at the school into an angry frenzy, but the moment she uses the tools of Babylon and stabs Mr. Saint-Josephs, the crowd “want[s] no part of it” (227). Gina is willing to go farther than the others in the name of retribution against Babylon, though she uses scissors, not the lightning that Bedward promised.

Gina shares similarities with Bedward, but the two characters have different motivations and come to different ends. Bedward is a prophet who promises to fly and rain down retribution on Babylon and oppressive colonial structures. Gina is a mother who takes retribution for the violence done to her son. Both fly in opposite ways. Bedward tries to fly but Babylon pulls him down. Gina tries to fight Babylon and is killed but then flies into the sky, doing what Bedward could not do while alive. Though she dies, she triumphs in her flight. The triumph, though, is bittersweet; though she manages to fly, she looks at the day of the autoclaps with regret, wishing that “from up here [she] could change things; could slip inside its hours and change the outcome” (4). Though she punished the man who hurt her child, Gina wishes she could change the outcome, survive the autoclaps, and live to raise her son.

Kaia is at the center of the autoclaps. A Rastafari boy, he has his dreadlocks cut off by his teacher, Mr. Saint-Josephs, in a fit of rage. He is only six on the day of the autoclaps, old enough to be traumatized by such a violation but young enough to lack the context for the action’s significance. When thinks about his lack of dreadlocks, he knows that something about his identity has been lost: “But what could Kaia hold onto now? Maybe he was no longer a lion like his mummy or his grandma” (187). Kaia’s emotions are clear in this line; loneliness and fear permeate the rhetorical question. However, he does not know about Bedward, Clarky, and the ongoing struggle between Babylon and the people of Augustown. His lack of knowledge allows for Ma Taffy’s storytelling to enter the narrative and for the bridging of 1920 and 1982 to begin.

The loss of his dreadlocks also complicates Kaia’s racial identity. Ma Taffy worries that “whenever Kaia’s hair grows back, it will almost certainly grow soft and straight. It will look like white people’s hair. For his short life, the boy’s dreadlocks have hidden this fact from him” (61). Kaia does not know who his father is or that he is not fully Black. All his life, he has held tight to his Rasta identity, symbolized by the strength stored in his locs. When his hair grows back, he may lose his understanding of who he is and where he fits, divided between Augustown and Beverly Hills.

Mrs. G is a significant secondary character, offering the perspective of a woman who is a part of Babylon but seeks to make a positive impact in the Augustown community. Mrs. G eventually forms a real relationship with Gina, but there are still some things that they cannot push past; the narrator states, “Mrs. G knows that there is something unbridgeable between herself and the helper—something to do with class and colour” (180). Mrs. G’s whiteness and wealth keep her at a distance from Gina. Despite her occasionally falling into the white savior trope (notably, in her initial false impression of Gina as someone who needed both a job and tutoring), she attempts to earnestly help Gina by paying for her college, though Gina dies before she can accept the academic opportunity. 

After the events of the autoclaps and Gina’s death, “Mrs. G went over to join [Kaia and Ma Taffy], as if she were family, and she put one hand around Kaia and the other hand she stretched out” (237). This gesture is rich with significance; though she and Kaia do not know it, they are grandmother and grandson. Though Kaia does not know fully who he is, Mrs. G’s gesture represents the hope that he can find a familial connection with his biological grandmother while maintaining his Rasta identity with Ma Taffy. This familial connection offers a sliver of hope for bridging the divide between Beverly Hills and Augustown, but there is much progress that must be made in terms of the dismantling of Babylon before such a bridge can flourish.